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Apple's App Store has reached yet another major milestone. On Saturday morning, Apple announced that the 10 billionth download has happened - an achievement that comes less than three years after the digital download destination first launched. For the past week, Apple has heavily promoted the forthcoming milestone on its website, offering an iTunes gift card worth $10,000 to the lucky person who reaches the magic number first.

Apple is yet to announce who the winner is. And while one would hope the recipient is an Apple loyalist and deserving die-hard downloader, one MMi poster recently observed in jest that "inevitably the person who downloads the 10 billionth app will not know about the contest and it will be a mother downloading Farmville." Still, one very fortunate individual is likely on the phone with Steve Jobs at this very moment, as the Apple chief has a history of personally calling to thank users who help usher in download milestones.

Although the App Store launched mid summer of 2008 with only five-hundred applications in its arsenal, today the digital app storefront is booming. At present, there are better than 300,000 free and paid mobile applications available for the iPhone and iPod Touch alone. To illustrate the App Store's compounding growth, it was only six months ago when the App Store reached 5 billion downloads. And as more apps - and App Stores - come online, that growth is bound to accelerate even faster.